Meter for measuring cable capacitance

My question is: Why be concerned about only capacitance? Why not overall impedance, especially since capacitance’s effect on the sound of your instrument is likely to be only one factor in an RLC circuit formed by your cabling, electronics & instrument.

I’d guess -- and this is just a SWAG - that in the OP's use case, even guitar pickups could have a relatively high value of inductance that overwhelms the effect of differences in capacitance.

Maybe! It could easily work the other way. But without hard numbers for all three components of the impedance that your amp sees, it’s all a crap shoot. You may hear various differences when you vary certain elements in the signal path, but a real engineer’s approach would be to quantify the relevant parameters before trying to infer, from empirical results only, a model that has predictive capabilities.

@noromance I love that.  Super-Clever!

@ajd7531 -

       One nice thing about Amazon: if it doesn't work for you, whatever the reason, you can return it.                                    

I use an Excelvan M6013 for measuring capacitance of both guitar and audio cables.  It is inexpensive and available from Amazon.

The meter is a useful tool.  I’ve found guitar cable capacitance to noticeable affect the sound, especially direct into an amp. For reference, I primarily play a Telecaster into Fender amps.

Measure by putting a known capacitor (value) across the end of the cable and subtracting its value from the total.

It is “distributed capacitance” - you cannot measure it directly.  What you measure is a combination of capacitance, inductance and resistance of the cable.  I wouldn’t trust the meter, even when it displays sensible numbers.  There might be more complicated ways of multiple measurements at different frequencies and calculations, but I’ve never done it.  The best would be to get nominal capacitance per foot of the cable from manufacturer and adjust it (multiply) for the length.

Or, you could just calculate it here: 

Many capacitance meters HATE to be shorted. Capacitance of 1m wire should only be figured using an oscilloscope.

to gain necessary impedance safe for capacitance meter, you should have around few hundreds of meters of same wire tested as positive and negative terminal. 1m is waaay too short!!

Thanks! Will be ordering the first recommendation!

Just so you know, capacitance is only measured across 2 different conductors, unlike R and L.

   Here's a cheapo that goes down to .1 pF:

https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Capacitance-Capacitor-20000uF-Electroprobe/dp/B07R6MNWPL

    At the other end of the $$ spectrum: this will go down to nF and can vary frequencies.

https://www.keysight.com/us/en/product/E4981A/capacitance-meter.html

     Hurry though, as that one will be discontinued in December.     😉